Madame Bovary's Haberdashery Page 7

  Novelist at work

  Back home that afternoon, encouraged by Dr Singh’s concern for her – for surely he had been interested in her as a person, not just a patient – Cicely once more put on the pinprick glasses, ready to really start her second novel.

  Of course she could do it. After all, Last Chance had even been reviewed in the prestigious Briefly.

  Sensitive and promising, though marred by gratuitous sex scenes in needlessly exotic locations.

  But it had not sold well. Disappointingly, the author had turned out to be fat, frumpy, and worst of all, shy. She simply could not perform. How could she have written such lurid love scenes? She had made viewers of the talk shows feel that anyone could write a book. After each of her appearances, there had been a sudden spike, not in sales of her books, but in writing course enrolments.

  And now Mastiff had inserted two new conditions into the contract for her next book. She had to lose weight and improve her media presentation. As she had no inclination to do either, just yet, she readied herself to attack the actual writing part of the deal. Her hands were poised over the keyboard. But her mind was unable to throw up any images other than hypnotic blue eyes on a terracotta bust, golden caskets big enough to hold a body, jewel-handled knives outlining the silhouette of her friend.

  And a dark stain on the carpet that turned out to be blood …

  But she was not a gritty realist writer.

  Disturbed by these images that she could not use, she felt that peering into her magnifier, as well as the weight of her triple obligation, was really too exhausting. She managed only to choose a large font and name the file Novel 2, before she began drifting off to wherever the cyber-surf carried her. That was easier, floating around, bumping up against islands of large-print items of news, reefs of free downloads until …

  The tide washed her up against an ad for a screenplay competition. With her Visa card, she knew, about to max out on the eye operation, she had a sudden brainwave. She would turn Last Chance into a lucrative film script.

  Just then, she was interrupted by the telephone.

  ‘My goodness you’re hard to find, aren’t you? I’ve been through half the listings in the phone book. You are Cecilia’s little girl, aren’t you dear?’

  Cicely had last seen her Aunt Brigid at her mother’s funeral, and she was, as far as she knew, her only relative. Apart, of course from Uncle Bill, her mother’s other sibling.

  ‘I’ve had a fall, dear. I just need time to gather my strength a bit, you know.’

  She paused, allowing Cicely to guess at what was required of her. That was a family dynamic.

  ‘Would you like to come and stay?’

  ‘You are sweet but no thank you dear …’

  Cicely was guiltily relieved.

  ‘It’s him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘If you could take him off my hands, just for a bit, till I feel myself again?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your Uncle Bill, dear, you remember him?’

  As her aunt rambled on about what she had been doing these last years, Cicely tried to remember what she could about Uncle Bill. He had been too ill to attend her mother’s funeral. He was the only person she knew who actually said, ‘bah’, as in Dickens’ ‘bah, humbug’.

  And what else?

  From the age of eight, Cicely had looked after her mother. She had brought her tea on a tray in the morning, with her four different tablets lined up next to the saucer. Her mother had usually been in bed when Cicely arrived home from school, and she had never been allowed to bring any friends home.

  ‘My nerves …’

  On her tenth birthday, as usual, there had been no little guests. Her mother did not like Odette, her best friend.

  ‘She’s very loud. And she broke my potpourri bowl.’

  Uncle Bill and her mother, in her best quilted dressing gown, had sat on the verandah, wearing party hats, and Cicely had brought them out tea and slices of birthday cake.

  ‘You’re a very good girl, Sissy,’ he had said.

  She had hated the way adults called her that, as if it was funny.

  ‘That’s a lovely tray you’ve made us,’ he had added. She remembered that because she had been rarely praised.

  And then she suddenly remembered certain other information about this uncle which made her curse under her breath.

  Uncle Bill, sixty eight years old, had outworn his dead wife – who had died in harness, as the doctor had put it – by never lifting a finger to save himself, as Aunt Brigid had confided to Cicely at her mother’s funeral.

  And now that Aunt Brigid, his most recent carer, had had her fall, it was, of course, up to the last of his female relatives, Cicely, to ‘step in’.

  Aunt Brigid sounded so frail, how could she refuse? Cicely surrendered her address, they made a time for his arrival, and then she banged down the phone.

  Trapped.

  Bah!

  ‘Bah, that computer thing is in the way,’ he announced, as she was putting his two heavy suitcases on the fold-out sofa in her study. She did not like the look of them there.

  He was standing in front of the window and she could no longer see the greengage plum tree. She could not see the photo of Agatha Christie, sitting at her makeshift writing table in her tent in the Mesopotamian sun.

  He was greyer than she remembered. His clothes also were various shades of grey, except for his tie, which was a startling lime, as if to say that there was life in the old boy yet.

  As a child, she had found herself waiting, fascinated, for the ‘bah’ every time he had spoken. Uttered just before tackling the food, or just before he dragged himself up out of his chair, as if all of life was a pointless exercise.

  He opened his cases and sat on the improvised bed, waiting for Cicely to unpack his clothes. He supervised her as she put them in the old wardrobe that had come with the house. Then he said pointedly that it must be afternoon tea-time.

  ‘I’m no trouble. I just have it normal like, with milk and sugar. On a tray. And a biscuit if you’ve got one. Not that crumbly sort.’

  Cicely stared at her PC. It had never looked more attractive, more out of reach.

  ‘Why so glum, girl? It’s not as if you’ll be out of pocket over me.’

  Rent money? That did brighten her mood slightly.

  Uncle Bill soon exhausted the initial energy needed to make sure his bags were in the room he wanted, to inform her of his meal preferences, and to choose which chair would be his in the ‘TV room’.

  Her chintz armchair.

  ‘And I like my meals on a tray in front of the telly, out of your way.’

  She settled him according to his wishes. The old, after all, had their right to be fussy. She would have to get used to the companionship of the infirm.

  Returning to her ex-study, she rescued her disks and papers and, with some difficulty, moved the heavy computer from her old work table into her bedroom. The prehistoric PC was too big to set up if she was to still have a bedside table, so she left it on the floor.

  Uncle Bill was calling out to her. Yet another obstacle to her writing, she thought, with mixed feelings. What was he saying?

  ‘You can apply for the carer’s pension you know. Brigid’s will be stopped by now. Make it all well worth your while …’

  So that’s what he had meant about not being out of pocket.

  White nights

  It had been several long months already.

  Sitting with him while he drank another apparently satisfactory cup of tea, Cicely had just reminded him yet again that she would be going to the hospital soon, hoping he might take the hint.

  ‘Does that mean you’ll be leaving me alone?’

  He sounded like a child.

  ‘It’s only a day procedure.’

  ‘As long as you know that I can never be left alone. Doctor’s orders,’ he added, raising his eyebrows, for extra authority.

  Until now, her handiwork and her one-off pay
ment for Last Chance had provided her with just enough income to exclude her from Newstart or any other kind of benefit.

  But now, realising that he was staying, Cicely made the phone call and found that the carer’s allowance was indeed available to her, some compensation for being suddenly housebound with an uncle suffering from … what exactly? When she enquired he replied mysteriously,

  ‘Just general.’

  That diagnosis was not really precise enough to satisfy the pile of forms that soon arrived from Centrelink. Overwhelmed by their complex and intimate interrogation, she threw them straight into the recycle bin.

  She had to win the script competition.

  However much the carer’s allowance might have been, it would certainly have underpaid the twenty-four hour companion/scullery maid she was becoming. Cicely was feeling old before her time.

  As well as three meals proper, as he called them, there were also morning tea, afternoon tea and supper. And assisting him with his shower and cooking the invalid menu. Or heating it up, really, for he had pronounced her ‘vegetarian muck’ inedible. She now shopped at the supermarket for packets and cans, feeling embarrassed at the checkout, resisting the urge to explain that all this lifeless food was not her choice.

  But it was the nights that were the worst.

  He would thump on the wall with his walking stick to wake her if he wanted a drink or his tablets, though she had placed water and his pill bottles close by his bed.

  She offered to make him a Thermos of hot chocolate that he could help himself to in the middle of the night.

  ‘Bah, it’s nicer to have it served.’

  Yes, she supposed it was.

  Who would serve her, she wondered?

  The hospital had made it clear that there had to be someone else in the house on her first night after the procedure. She would be doped up, with her eyes bandaged overnight. She had said her uncle was in the house, but hadn’t added that he was hardly able-bodied.

  After having played nursemaid to her mother as a child, she understood the burden that the ill unwittingly placed on even the most loving. Refusing to join that shadowy world of the invalid that her mother had inhabited, she had lied that her uncle was picking her up from the hospital. Anyway, everyone knew a cataract operation, even double, was straightforward these days. It was all laser, or ultrasound, not that she could stand to read the meticulously grisly explanations of the operation in the leaflets they gave her. They were just being cautious, so that they were safe from being sued.

  Once disturbed by Uncle Bill, she would lie awake, unable to return to sweet oblivion. Sometimes she would write emails to Odette, hunching over the computer on the bedroom floor, or listen to more detective stories on cassettes, for both she and the library still ran on old technology.

  The emails to Odette didn’t bounce back, so she could have been reading them. People just didn’t disappear into thin air like that.

  But her emails skirted the issue closest to her heart. She wrote instead about her operation, the script competition, but most of all she let off steam about her housebound life.

  After the story tapes and the emails were finished, Cicely would lie wide awake, seeing again the sharp daggers flying towards Odette, whizzing closer and closer as they hit the corkboard.

  Odette’s harsh words to her about the novel often came back to her. Perhaps it was true. Novelists didn’t really deserve friends. That’s why she didn’t have any.

  Cicely tried to tell herself that it was Zac, after all, who had turned Odette against her. Maybe he was more hurt than she knew that she had stopped sleeping with him.

  Had Odette embarked on one risky adventure too many?

  A dangerous place

  So high, close to the clouds, with a view all around for miles.

  When her eyes were better, she might even be able to see the ocean, which was just inspiring an opening image for the film script, when she realised that she had forgotten the lucky Thermos from which she had drunk robust Assam while writing Last Chance.

  She had looked forward so much to this stolen hour of precious solitude after her shopping duties, but now found that she could not write a word, at least on the screen – for her scribbles in her small blue notebook seemed to tap another source – without this talismanic Thermos.

  But what was that noise?

  She froze.

  A tapping at the balcony window. How could anyone have got onto that tiny balcony, a mere decorative afterthought? It was big enough only for a planter, and yet … there it was again.

  Cautiously, she approached the window. Made out a quick, darting movement. She tiptoed closer and stood to one side of the window so that her shadow would not fall on it. She put on her pin-prick glasses.

  Large, light in colour, busily scratching at something in a planter. Its task completed, a ruffled bird squatted on the newly worked soil. Roosting? Up here in what it saw, perhaps, as just a very tall tree, away from cats and other predators.

  The Tower. Two birds, one flying away, one staying in the falling tower, in spite of it being struck by lightning. By coming here every day, she would be on hand to welcome Odette if she ever returned.

  Tomorrow, she would start writing, bring the lucky Thermos.

  Meanwhile …

  Unobserved proximity to someone else’s computer is a dangerous place to be.

  And so here was Cicely, typing in her third guess at Odette’s user name: odetteboylan no caps no space. She clicked in the password box, and the little row of friendly asterisks indicating that it was in the memory came up cooperatively. Very slack about security, was Odette.

  Feeling like a Miss Marple at this first real success in sleuthing, having cracked her first code, Cicely rang the hotline to the provider. Using Odette’s details and password, and a swipe of her own credit card, she re-established a connection as quickly as can be done when a company wants money from you.

  The most recent emails were urgent messages from Odette’s server, warning her of imminent disconnection due to ‘non-received payments’. She scrolled down though the offers of Viagra, Nigerian investments and increasingly hysterical reminders from her server that her subscription was about to expire. Arranged according to sender, one after the other. until, there remained only Cicely’s own emails to Odette.

  Unopened.

  Dear O,

  Every time I try to get out of the house, he claims he is having a ‘bad spell’.

  A few days ago he had a sudden ‘queasiness’, probably because that morning I had run in to have a shower during his prolonged toilet-going session and he was already sitting at the table and ready for breakfast at least three minutes before I was ready to prepare it. He managed to ‘get something down’, but then announced that he felt too weak to put his false teeth in Steradent. This was a punishment for me, as up till now I have insisted he do this daily task himself, my last bastion of resistance. But I had to do it for him before I could get out of the house to go shopping, to the library, all those tasks that are now a pleasure for me, just because I am away from his incessant demands.

  While I was out, I had an inspiration! What was it, I hear you ask?

  If he is not going to be well enough to allow me out for a few hours ‘to the shops’ every day – to be alone – I will ask Martha (the next door neighbour he detested on sight) who has already offered to come and look after him.

  By the way, I had never even met Martha, or even seen her, before Uncle Bill moved in. Suddenly, she just appeared when I checked the mail one day. The friendly neighbour all of a sudden.

  She’s given to monologues, delivering information which is clearly intended to be passed on to Bill. She’s raised five children and misses someone to cook for, she says. At dinner time I can smell fresh bread or baked potatoes or spicy Indian stews.

  ‘I’ve got a backlog in the freezer, going to waste in there,’ she says. ‘Can’t you get him to try some?’

  And I did try. She gave me some
scones for him, but unfortunately they were ‘the crumbly sort’. He gave me strict instructions not to let her back into the house.

  UPDATE:

  The threat of Martha in the house has worked. He has started behaving again. When I came back this afternoon, he said he had pulled a miracle cure on himself, and he’d just eaten half a Swiss Roll and three cups of sweet milky tea. Have to buy teabags for him as he is finicky about tea-leaves, saying his last surviving friend died from choking on one. Must be terrible to see all your friends drop off the perch like that.

  So when can we meet up? I’m sorry about the novel. Really sorry. Let’s make a fresh start. I am free for a few hours each day and there appears to be nothing wrong with him except an overwhelming desire to be waited on hand and foot.

  Love CC

  Dear O,

  No reply from you! At least let me know that I am forgiven.

  Darling, what a woman can accomplish when she’s housebound!

  Tonight he told me that I was a Very Good Woman. When I was little and served him a tea-tray, I remember how he called me a ‘good girl’.

  Do you know what brought about this high praise?

  He told me to cook him a poached egg.

  ‘Not too soft. Not too hard. So when I cut into it, I think the yolk is about to run out but it doesn’t. I have it on toast. Not too dark. Not too light. I have the crusts cut off.’

  As you can imagine, it meant never taking my eyes off the egg in the pan and at the same time not letting the toast get too dark. Nerve-racking!

  But mission accomplished, he said it was Perfect!!! So now I have my Diplomas of Professional Poaching and of Being a Good Woman.

  I have been wondering about the linguistic implications of the way he says ‘some woman’ all the time when referring to an individual woman. As in:

  ‘You used to be able to get some woman to do things for you, but now they expect to get paid and so you have to ask a relative.’